*Please note that this price is currently unconfirmed - if the final price is lower, customers who have preordered will pay that lower price.

Xbox 360 Elite console. The console is equipped with a premium black finish and three powerful core processors capable of producing the best in HD entertainment (up to 1080p), 16:9 cinematic aspect ratio, anti-aliasing for smooth textures, full surround sound, HDMI output and DVD playback with upscaling capabilities right out of the box.

Voted cold as you're just going to be paying RRP - don't think there'll be any lack of supply come August. In my personal oppinion the mjor benefit of this release will be that it will hopefully cement an official price cut in the premium model.

People should remember the Elite doesn't resolve reliability issues (probably) its based on the same generation of pcb as earlier models but revised to give out a hdmi signal. The newer generation 360s won't be out til next year I believe and they will be a radical re-engineering using the latest processor technnology. 65nm process instead of 90nm I think. Really the Elite should just replace the premium at no extra cost.

People should remember the Elite doesn't resolve reliability issues (probably) its based on the same generation of pcb as earlier models but revised to give out a hdmi signal. The newer generation 360s won't be out til next year I believe and they will be a radical re-engineering using the latest processor technnology. 65nm process instead of 90nm I think. Really the Elite should just replace the premium at no extra cost.

Reliable or not, MS has just increased the warranty period from 1 year to 3 years :)

Love the xbox games, but is this any quieter than the original? HDMI is a plus :)

No quieter than other 360's as uses same components and DVD drives - you may get a BENQ quiet drive but then again may not (but you could do in a normal 360).

I would rather go for a VGA cable for £10-£20 as this gives the same digital connection and frame rate as the HDMI cable does - only issue is a slight bug fix may need to be applied for some games (Live Update or game update can get this), also audio is plugged in separate (but can use Optical Audio connection for 5.1 DTS etc).

Got it setup on mine and looks better than Component :)

All we can hope is the extra heatsink is being installed to stop the 3 Red Light failure and other fixes!?!

People should remember the Elite doesn't resolve reliability issues (probably) its based on the same generation of pcb as earlier models but revised to give out a hdmi signal. The newer generation 360s won't be out til next year I believe and they will be a radical re-engineering using the latest processor technnology. 65nm process instead of 90nm I think. Really the Elite should just replace the premium at no extra cost.

The motherboard has been changed more than just giving out HDMI - that would be fairly simple, there have been changes made to prevent the heating problems. The CPU and GPU mount is now epoxied on to prevent the PCB warping although only time will tell if the changes are effective.

They should've just added a quieter drive in it, i mean the xbox 360 one is really loud.

Newer premiums should have a quieter drive, plus one of the recent dashboard updates seems to keep the standard drive a a bit quieter as well as it slows down more rather than spinning at full pelt the whole time when it wasn't needed.

I always find it interesting that Microsoft get press and articles about the xbox / 360 when there is any problems and yet everyone seems to of magically forgotten how badly Sony screwed us all last generation with the playstation 2.

Although the 'red ring of death' is something that it seems every 360 owner has either experienced or had a friend that has gone through, during ps2 ownership I went through about 3 lasers and didn't know a single ps2 owner that didn't have disc read errors. Sony didn't even do the honest thing either and denied it the whole time!

Just passing on today's news and ensure peeps are aware of the problem - not intended to cause offence to XBOX fans

I was talking in general rather than specifically, interestingly though I have seen a few Elites on some auction sites that are listed as Pal and a lot cheaper than this pre-order price.. so Id recommend holding off for now!

during ps2 ownership I went through about 3 lasers and didn't know a single ps2 owner that didn't have disc read errors. Sony didn't even do the honest thing either and denied it the whole time!

My PS2 (I got it the day after it was launched) never had any faults, errors or anything like that. It was 100% reliable. Given the amount of them sold I suspect plenty were just like mine. If the 360 had sold 50m odd consoles everyman and his dog would have heard of the overheating issues with them.

A few years ago when the ps2 came out generally sony were tuning their dvd products so that they wouldn't read copied media very well. There were issues with both dvd players and ps2 with regard reading dvd discs. This was by intent rather than poor quality because sony own lots of movie and television production companies. It only lasted for about a year before they realised they were getting a lot more warranty returns because of it and it was costing them. They basically wanted their dvd players to read geniune dvds only but it backfired on them. The general reliability of the ps2 was very good and even the disc reading problem could be easily cured by adjusting the laser to where it should have been set at the time of manufacture. However you needed an oscilloscope to do this properly which most people don't have.